


Ghost Stories

by theskywasblue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Ghost Hunting, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23435677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: ”People get famous doing this shit?” Dean scoffs, leaning over Benny’s shoulder, trying to get a better look at the monitor. “Running around old buildings and jumping at shadows?”“It’s the internet age,” Benny laughs. “All ya need’s a gimmick.”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Ghost Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kansouame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kansouame/gifts).



> For Kansouame's prompt "meeting a celebrity for the first time" - which...this kind of is not, but hopefully good enough. It could be a much better and longer story if I had the wherewithal to write it.

Dean had been expecting a full camera crew.

Instead, when he steered his cruiser down the overdrown track of the old road leading out to the Hebert place, all he found was a white panelled van parked in the weeds, and a little guy with too much blond hair running back and forth with camera tripods and lighting rigs. A chick in a leather jacket and biker boots was sitting in the open back of the van, fussing with a couple of cameras that looked like they were designed to be strapped to a person’s chest, and a third guy was standing on the house’s covered porch, almost invisible in the heavy afternoon shadow.

Dean put the cruiser in park, and leaned back in his seat. “Thought this was supposed to be a T.V. crew,” he muttered. Then again, how many people did it take to shoot a T.V. show these days? Dean didn’t even know. Local legend held that back in the day, _Unsolved Mysteries_ had come out to shoot an episode at the Hebert House - but since then it had only been a hang-out for bored kids, and everyone but the most local of locals (like Dean, who came from three generations of folks that hadn’t wandered further from town than a couple of miles) had figured that the darker history of the Hebert House was more or less forgotten.

At least until the crew of _Fear the Unknown_ had rolled into town.

_”People get famous doing this shit?” Dean scoffs, leaning over Benny’s shoulder, trying to get a better look at the monitor. “Running around old buildings and jumping at shadows?”_

_“It’s the internet age,” Benny laughs. “All ya need’s a gimmick.”_

With the engine off, the temperature inside the cruiser was climbing by the second. Dean shoved the door open, and was met immediately with the full, brutal heat of the July afternoon, thick with the almost-burnt smell of dry and dying wild grass. Black flies swirled in lethargic clouds, and the omnipresent hum of crickets drowned out almost all other ambient noise as Dean approached the van. He was halfway there when the little blond guy came bounding into his path like an excited puppy.

“He-ey! From the Sheriff’s Department, right?” He shook one of Dean’s hands enthusiastically with both of his. “So glad you’re here. Name’s Gabriel.”

“Dean Winchester.”

“Deputy Dean!” Gabriel grinned maniacally. “That’s great.”

Dean scowled, squaring his shoulders as he reclaimed his hand. “Deputy _Winchester._ ”

“Right - right,” Gabriel waved a hand. “Man, that is going to look _great_ on a title card.”

“On a _what_?”

Gabriel didn’t seem to hear the question. “We’ll set you up so that you have the house behind you, obviously.” He planted a hand, firmly, on the small of Dean’s back and began steering him through the grass. “We’ll set the camera up over here - Meg, is that camera ready to go? I want to crack this interview out before we lose the light from over there.”

Okay, obviously there had been some kind of mistake. Dean dug the heels of his boots into the dry earth. “Woah - wait a minute. I’m not here for an interview. I’m here to make sure you guys don’t -” _do anything fucking stupid_ “get hurt.”

Gabriel’s grin faltered, but only barely. “Deputy, deputy!” he clapped Dean on the arm, and Dean side-stepped, irritably. “Don’t you want to be part of the magic? You’re a local boy, aren’t you? That’s the kind of insight we _love_ for our videos.” 

“Listen -” Dean started to interject.

“Gabriel,” the guy from the porch called, cutting them both off. “There’s something wrong with the sound on the kitchen camera setup. It keeps cutting out when I’m doing my introduction.”

“Aw, shit,” Gabriel sighed. “Alright I’ll come take a look at it. Don’t worry about the logistics, Deputy - I’ll make a couple phone calls, get it all sorted out with your bosses!” he promised, before rushing into the house. He said something, briefly, to the guy standing on the porch, and then disappeared from sight, leaving Dean floundering in the tall grass, feeling very much like he had been tricked somehow.

Jody hadn’t said anything about an interview, but if he raised her on the radio now, she’d probably just end up telling him to _play nice_ with the tourists.

With Gabriel out of sight, the other guy came down off the porch. Dean recognized him as the host from the video clips he and Benny had watched on YouTube - Castiel… _something-or-other_ \- one hell of a mouthful of a name for a guy that looked pretty normal striding towards Dean in tidy jeans and a plain, white button-down with the sleeves rolled up.

“Sorry,” he said, stopping just a little too close to Dean. The first thing Dean noticed was that, apparently, they hadn’t used any post-production tricks to achieve the guy’s vaguely dangerous-sounding gravel voice. The second thing he noticed was that they hadn’t used any tricks on his wildly blue eyes, either - and _woah, dial it back, Winchester_. “Gabriel can come on a little strong.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean cleared his throat and took an awkward half-step back to get a little breathing room. “You could say that.”

“You must not be a fan of the show.”

Dean exhaled, hard, and forced himself not to look away. He wasn’t embarrassed. Why should he be embarrassed? “How’d you guess?”

Castiel made a motion that wasn’t so much a shrug as the suggestion of one. “Fans always want to be in our videos. They don’t usually complain when we ask them for interviews.”

How he managed to point that out, and make it sound like a simple fact, not just an excuse to brag, was a mystery to Dean. “I wasn’t complaining. I just don’t believe in - ya know - ghosts or any of that shit.”

For the first time since he had walked over, Castiel pulled his gaze away from Dean, glancing back towards the house. The sun was sinking now, making the weed-wracked and peeling shingles look like they were smouldering in the heat, and ready to catch fire. Despite the heat, Dean felt a sudden chill go down his spine.

“We’ll see what we can do about that,” Castiel said.

-End-


End file.
